


someday, you'll blow us all away

by intrikate88



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 01:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5724916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrikate88/pseuds/intrikate88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia and Han's son is deeply gifted with the Force. </p>
<p>It doesn't seem like such a blessing, sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someday, you'll blow us all away

 Ben Solo is not a quiet baby.

This surprises no one, given his parentage, but he spends the nights wailing to drown even them out. Han and Leia take turns walking the bedroom, trying to settle their son down while the other tries to sleep, and neither are very successful. Han half-sings old remembered songs from his childhood. Leia tries to grasp what little conscious understanding she has of the Force to will peace and serenity to him. Ben wants none of it, and even in his infancy pushes back against her with the Force, just the mental equivalent of a raspy deafening wail and flailing soft fists. 

It isn’t until a trip off-planet that they discover the hum of spacecraft engines lulls him to sleep, and Leia can finally sleep too. Han sits at the controls, Ben sleeping in a special seat in the copilot chair, and he could swear that maybe some of that simple tranquility he feels is the Force pushing at him, too. 

Or maybe this is just fatherhood. It is equally strange and full of joy.

~~~

Ben is two, or maybe younger, in his first memory: bound in a sling to his mother’s chest as she sits in the New Republic’s senate. He doesn’t know then that this is her second time participating in legislative politics and that she had thought she would like it more than she actually does. He does know, though, that he must stay quiet, no matter how tired he is of all these people arguing around him.  

“We must not rest until we have reclaimed every institution of the Empire,” Leia tells the chamber. “While we defeated their leadership, their soldiers still remain, and their weapons. The planets that depended on the Empire for trade still need to maintain their economies, and those laborers exploited by the Empire must still be liberated from their slavemasters. Victory is no time for complacency! The Empire maintained a status quo, and in the absence of its enforcement, local conflicts are inevitable, and the power vacuum will only lead to worse despots sitting in the seats that the Emperor and Darth Vader once occupied. The work has only just begun, and I hope that you will consider my proposal to fund a peacekeeping corps that will address these pressing issues.”  

Her proposal will go to one committee after another, funding quibbled over and riders attached, until a version of it is finally passed a year later that is almost, but not quite, useless. Ben won’t remember this, of course; his memories are mixed up with others in the senate chamber, countless proposals and warnings of galactic anarchy that are the cause of endless debates. 

This is how he grows up thinking of the peaceful process of democracy: it mostly tells him to not make a sound and keeps him from going out to play, and nothing gets done while a lot of grownups argue about how much less they could do.   

“Why don’t you just make them all agree with you? Or be in charge of everything?” Ben asks his mother one day, when he’s old enough to understand a little more of what goes on.  

“I can’t do that, Ben,” Leia says. 

“Yes you can, you have the Force, just like Uncle Luke. I’ve seen him tell people what to do before, and they just do it,” Ben responds, entirely reasonably. The entire senate might be a bit more than he’s ever seen Luke influence, but it should still work.  

“I can’t do that,” Leia clarifies, “because if you make people do what you want just so you can always have your way, that’s wrong. That’s what made the Emperor evil. If I did that, I’d be like him.” She looks at him, very serious. “Do you understand that, Ben? That it’s wrong for one person to decide they get to make decisions for everyone else, no matter what anyone else needs?"

Ben thinks about the candy he told his friend to give him the week before. He hadn’t been trying to make him do it, he had just said it, and his friend had given Ben the candy. He doesn’t know if Poe had made that decision or if Ben had made it for him. He’s worried, now. “Yeah, Mom,” he says, even though he’s not sure if he understands. 

Leia looks at him for a moment. “Alright, go wash your hands,” she says abruptly. “It’s nearly time for dinner."

~~~

 

Ben is just like any other child when he is a toddler, when he is four, when he is six; he gets angry when he can’t go outside to play or when his father tells him to put his toys away, and he stomps around raging and shouting and tearful. But he is not just like any other child, because when he’s angry, he doesn’t throw a toy against the wall and smash it. Furniture goes sliding across the floor. The power flickers out. Nearby droids start beeping screams. Glass shatters. 

In the aftermath, when his anger has spent itself, there’s only his ruined bedroom and the broken things to sweep up off the floor, and his burning cheeks because other kids don’t do this. Other kids don’t have to worry about how much damage they do. Other kids don’t wait for their parents’ disappointment to set in, and if it doesn’t, desperately wish they would just yell at him instead of being quiet and sad and looking at each other.  

He wonders if other people feel things as strongly as he does, or if it’s just him. Ben sometimes feels like he’s too much, for himself and for everyone else. 

Sometimes he gets nightmares and they can be as bad as his anger; doors slam and his bed gets knocked into the wall. One time he wakes up and his mother is holding him, whispering _shhh, shhh_  in his hair, and he tries to calm his breathing. She has a long bleeding scrape down one arm and there’s a broken lamp with a jagged edge halfway across the room.  

“Did I do that?” he whispers, laying a hand on Leia’s arm. 

“It’s not your fault,” she says, not denying that this Force in him had injured her. “Ben, sweetheart, it isn’t your fault, you couldn’t help it." 

He can’t help the deep, shaking sobs that come up from his chest, either. 

_But it is your fault_ , he can’t help thinking, has always thought. His mother in a princess, a senator, a hero; his father is a general and a hero; everyone they know are heroes, legends. He’s just a kid who can’t do anything like that but also he has some kind of destruction in him that gets out, and he thinks it could hurt everyone. It feels like a blackness inside him that sometimes he’s afraid is everything he really is. He knows who his grandfather was (not many other people do) and he wonders if a person can look like that on the inside. He doesn’t know who he can ask that, though.

~~~

“Senator, we fought and we killed for this republic that we now have the chance to rebuild,” Leia says heatedly in the halls, as Ben approaches, meeting his mother at her office after he gets out of school. “I don’t understand why you refuse to commit! Do you believe our Republic is worth defending?"

“Of course, Princess,” says the man, condescendingly, “but-"

“ _Don’t call me princess_ ,” Leia warns. “And if you think that, defend it! The First Order isn’t some small nostalgia club. I’ve received intelligence that they’ve seized twenty percent of the remaining Imperial fleet, and are already in control of several systems."

“Systems on the far reach of the galaxy, where they will run out of resources long before they can summon enough power to be a threat! And why do you have access to that information, Leia? You’re not a member of the intelligence committee."

Ben can hear his mother’s teeth grind from down the hall at the familiarity. He winces. There’s no end of people his mother can make sorry when she gets in a mood about things like this. _Just listen to her_ , he silently pleads in the direction of the senator. _Take her seriously. Do what she says._

The man shifts, leaning back out of Leia’s personal space and not looking like he’s about to try to put a hand on her shoulder (which could result in it getting broken off, if he tried it). “But I don’t see why that should prevent an inquiry into the First Order’s activities,” the senator says abruptly. “I am listening. I do take you seriously."

“I— well,” Leia says. “I’m glad to hear that, Senator. I think you’ll see, once you look at the matter seriously, that this is a security concern worthy of our time.” She’s mollified by the sudden change in legislative stance, and Ben relaxes a little, as the senator walks off, shaking his head a little. Leia walks back into her office, and Ben follows her in a second later. 

“How was school, Ben?” she asks him.

“Fine,” he answers automatically. He’s pretty sure he just changed someone’s mind with the Force, and not even his own mother knows. She isn’t even paying any more attention to him than usual, but he knows he just… did the mind thing. Like Uncle Luke does. Ben knows that’s not how democracy is supposed to work, he’s had enough civics lectures from practically everyone, and he knows what his mother has said about doing that being wrong, but… he finds he doesn’t care.

That’s when it occurs to him: he doesn’t have to care. He just made his mom happy, which is something that makes him happy, and made her job easier by doing something wrong, and he doesn’t have to feel bad about it. He’s so used to feeling bad about things that come from the Force. 

“Ben?” Leia asks, interrupting his train of thought. “Your school break is coming up, and your father and I have been thinking that maybe you should go and spend the break with your uncle. He’s offered to start training you as a Jedi. What do you think?” She looks nervous, and a little tired. 

Ben considers. If this is what it’s like to use the Force, instead of having it use you, and he won’t have to be afraid of having nightmares, or losing his temper, and learning how to make everything a little bit easier, he’d like that. Uncle Luke is weird, and has a robot hand, but he’s fun, too.  

“Okay,” he says. “I’d like that."

 

**Author's Note:**

> All credit to Lin-Manuel Miranda for blatantly and not even subtly ripping off Hamilton lyrics not only for the title of this, but for Leia's political arguments. What can I say, I have a lot of feelings about starting nations and passing legacies along, whether that's two centuries ago or a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.


End file.
